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Hilarity can be great unless it happens with someone with whom you have feelings for. Meet Ana, a 20 something lady from Chicago. She’s sweet, charming, and I truly wanted to date her… until today.

“Hello Ana, how are you today?” I started by making my normal greeting.

“I’m good, how was your weekend?” She answers. She must be into me. ahehe

…blah blah blah

So we went on to talking business as I had to send files to our head office in Chicago. Ana was assisting me. It would have all gone well until a window appeared with the words SEND ONLY SELECTED QUEUES

Now, this was a new word for me. I did not know what this word meant lest how to say it. This was the conflict of the day: How to pronounce ‘QUEUES?’

“Ana, a window opened and it said…”

“Yes?” Ana asks.

“send only selected…”

I deliberately missed saying QUEUES thinking she would catch it. Hows that for smoothiness, if that’s even a word. However, Ana did not know what the heck I was talking about. She waited for me to finish the sentence. Now I had to come up with a pronunciation!

My mind began to list a matrix of the possible ways to pronounce this ill spelled word. I never even knew such letters could ever go together. A gazillion combinations ran into my kokote, each presenting itself a viable way to pronounce it. Finally, in a nano-second, I have one.

I say slowly. “it said… ‘SEND ONLY SELCTED… KYU-WEE-WEES.”

Shit.

An alarm began to resound in my head “ERROR! ERROR! LOSER! LOSER!” It said repeatedly. In an instant I felt that there was world peace at my expense. A time when the world decided to stop what they were doing only to laugh at me.

Even my soul stepped from my physical body to laugh at me. “Paolo you stupid motherfucker!”

For go’sakes, I know ‘de ja vu’ and ‘coup de etat.’ But this one, in the 25 years I have lived on earth. Why have I never come across it? And how could I have said the one most likely NOT to be the pronunciation? I could I have just said KYU-WEES and it would have slipped on as an honest, non-hilarious mistake. But no, it wouldn’t be competely ME without making a fool of myself.

Ana was polite. Not a slight laugher was to be heard from her. She just said “It’s ‘CUES.'”

I send her the files while, in the silence of the office, I felt like banging my head on the computer. “That’s the word you wanted Paolo! That’s how you pronounce QUEUES!”

Devastated, I would try to make a cool impression for the last time in my life. Though, I could not afford to be smart lest my faulty minds hikes up another boo-boo. I resort to honesty.

“Well” I tell Ana. “They don’t teach these things in school do they?”

Ana smirked. Like I had allowed her to let out what had imploded within her body in the last 20 seconds.

“They didn’t teach me that either.” She answers.

Her polite remark put things back onto perspective. A fitting conclusion. Our relationship shall purely be professional from this point.